The Elegant Variation: ED RANTS NAKED!

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March 10, 2004

ED RANTS NAKED!

Ed shares his different stages of nakedness with us. It's kind of amusing. In a deeply terrifying sort of way.

We hear at TEV remain steadfastly clothed. But we dig the sentiment. (And he's actually got a pretty cool announcerish voice, unlike our nasal whine.)

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TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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Reviews & Criticism

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